The present disclosure relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing system, and a power control method.
A central processing unit (CPU) incorporated into a personal computer (PC) operates in low power by lowering an operating frequency and an operating voltage at a time of instruction execution. On the other hand, at a time of no instruction execution, the CPU operates so as to reduce power consumption by transiting to a sleep state operating at a very low operating voltage. For example, JP 2004-246400A discloses a mechanism for transiting to a sleep state when a CPU is in a no instruction execution state.
Such as a cell phone, a smartphone, and a tablet terminal, equipment that can constantly connect to a network and that can instantly turn on and off a power supply has been widely spread. In addition, a movement to cause PCs to achieve operation (AOAC, always on always connect) achieved by such equipment is spreading. As a technology for achieving an AOAC environment, there is a technology referred to as Connected Standby or Intel® Smart Connect Technology (iSCT), for example.
Particularly, iSCT have a feature that can easily achieve a relatively-inexpensive AOAC environment by using an existing device. iSCT is a technology that equipment periodically returns from a sleep state (S3) to a state (S0-iSCT) running with low power consumption, runs only for a short time, receives an e-mail, updates data, and then again returns to the sleep state. By such operation, a user can consistently use an up-to-date PC.